Hello Mozillians!
Over the last 5 months we delivered a program to help communities have more impact through hardware, specifically the Sony Z3C devices. The goal was support contributors with new hardware that will increase contribution (quality or quantity) to Mozilla products, technology or programs.
This program was heavily based on how easy was the logistics for this, and contributors committing to report back their progress.
On the first aspect we’ve found some blockers that have prevented us to be more agile and expedite on the way that those devices reached the contributors. On the second, we’ve found that people were struggling with the technical specs of those devices (smartphones with almost 3 years in the market --launched in 2014), and with the limitation to perform a better project or a high-profile project that really has an impact on the community or within the contributors.
Because of these reasons, and since the overall cost of this program exceeded what we’ve planned at the beginning, we are stopping momentarily this program and we will be focusing on new ways to increase contributors impact. We will be thinking on new ways to help communities through Hardware, but due to limitations related to external factors (customs, shipping fees, etc), and the limitations that this hardware has, we think that we should be more strategic with the way we spent our resources.
In case you want to send us your report or ask for more information, don’t hesitate to comment here, or submit your report uploading it to this Google Folder.